Rock Xtreme CTX Pro T76 review

Portable gaming is even more tangible with the Core 2 Duo

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Our Verdict

Gaze past the standard exterior and you'll discover a beast of a machine

For

Built for gaming

Powerful graphics and processor

Against

Not the best default display resolution

Terrible appearance and exterior

Imagine a mobile processor faster than an FX-62 working alongside a 7900GTX, and you'll get an idea of this monster's power... Just in case you've been hiding under your metaphorical rock of choice lately, Intel is back on top. Forget the Pentium 4 - Intel certainly hopes you do - and instead turn your attention to its lovechild of the Pentium M and Pentium D: Core 2 Duo.

The mobile rendition of the chip is mildly less pant-wetting, but it's still the ultimate choice for mobile junkies, and slots straight into nominally older Core Duo laptops, too.

Not a company to beat around the bush when it comes to new tech, Rock has gone straight for the jugular and used the fastest rendition of the Core 2 Duo in this Xtreme CTX Pro. At 2.33GHz, this chip will happily take on most desktop processors and leave them clutching their caches in pain.

Intel claims a 20 percent performance improvement over a similarly clocked Core Duo, and our benchmarks can't argue. Rock has married this processor with 1GB of DDR2 667MHz memory for a powerful core specification, and the 7,200rpm hard drive continues this attention to performance detail.

CPU aside, the large footprint means that there's enough room for NVIDIA's GeForce Go7900 as well, complete with no less than 512MB of memory. This machine was built for gaming, and it's up to the task. The 3DMark06 score of 4,845 is impressive from a machine that can be thrown over your shoulder (providing you're a gym-goer), and you can expect over 100fps in Quake IV, too.

The screen's default resolution of 1,680x1,050 may not be supported by every game out there, but the graphics engine can throw most titles to this panel without a whimper. We do have a couple of reservations, mind. The silver finish exudes spray-painted plastic tackiness rather than exclusive class. Our unit's keyboard was also unresponsive when tasked, but neither of these detract from the performance on offer.

This machine isn't cheap. Sure, £1,749 will buy you a second-hand car with a big boot, as well as a similarly powered desktop system to put into it, but if you're in the market for a portable gaming system, the Rock CTX Pro T76 defines the standard. Alan Dexter